Fair enuf, anyone can write anything, its the net afterall. I will say though it is from a company and not say you or I
https://www.ampereanalysis.com/
but who knows perhaps they are just BS'ing
Depends on the source, some sources have XBS consoles at ~8.65 million units.
Didn't Sony just remove a load of copper as well from the latest revision?
It helps but not quite as much as one might think. The cost of aluminum has also gone up almost 50% since the launch of the consoles. Of, course, it's still a lower cost per unit measurement than copper, but pretty much all raw materials have gone up massively in price in the past year.
So, while switching to aluminum saved them from the increase in the price of copper, it's not as large of a savings when you compare current aluminum prices to copper prices from a year ago. It's still a savings, just not as large a savings.
Of course, helping all that is just a reduction in the weight of materials used for the heatsink.
There is no more than 100g of copper in current generation consoles, which is under $1 in value.
If the current model PS5 (at 3.6kg) were made of entirely of copper, it's value would be around $30. The heavier Xbox Series X (at 4.45kg) would have a value of $40 at today's copper prices. Assuming highest grade, 100% pure copper. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Don't worry about copper.
The way mass industries work is by buying up capacity for X years in advance, so Microsoft and Sony will have bought - probably increasing - capacity of RAM and NAND for the next X years at prices gradually reducing because manufacturing prices generally reduce over time. The current chip shortage will not impact the costs of consoles going forward because those prices would have been negotiated long before that crisis happened. Whilst the ship shortage may impact supply, it will not impact cost for Microsoft and Sony.
Sure, I noted that it wasn't the only cost increase WRT the consoles. Everything used in the consoles is going up in price and while both Sony and MS have secured supply that will buffer them to an extent with regards to short term volatility in the market, their suppliers would have been remiss if the cost of components weren't also tied to an extent to longer term market trends related to the cost of manufacturing those components for MS/Sony. Using a greatly exaggerated example to illustrate this, if the cost of materials suddenly went up 1000% or foundry costs shot up 500% over an extended period or permanently, increases in the cost of secured components would by necessity go up. Where that point is within the contracts that Sony and MS negotiated is the only point in question. It does noone any good if a contract were to put a supplier at a point where they may go out of business in order to fulfill the contract.
So, it may help mitigate somewhat the cost increases from materials (copper, alluminum, plastics, PCBs, etc.) and silicon (TSMC, Samsung, and other foundries wafer starts) going up anywhere from 10-50% or potentially more. And might even help insulate them from increased manufacturing costs.
It won't, however, help much with increased shipping costs or costs of operations related to shortages of components due to suppliers having a difficult time sourcing the materials that everyone is trying to get a hold of like copper and aluminum, hence the greatly increased prices for materials.
All of this means that at best, the cost of sales for consoles will only go up slightly in the short term. What it also means, however, is that there is unlikely to be any cost reductions. Even in secured supply cost reductions in contracts are generally tied to whether or not there are cost reductions on the supply side (materials, manufacturing, etc. for the suppliers). If there are no cost reductions on the supplier's side then there are no cost reductions to pass on to Sony and MS.
Regards,
SB
